Monthly Archives: July 2012

Yay, Jeremiah is home! He was working in Ohio helping restore power after the storms they had out there. Best of all he decided to take the week off and hang out with us. This couldn’t make me happier but my menu for the week wasn’t really condusive to a male appetite. Let’s face it, I can survive on a lot less food than he can. Jeremiah will vocalize if he is hungry or if the meal is a little “petite” so I have to be prepared. And I wasn’t.
I woke up one morning and realized that we didn’t have cereal or eggs and panicked a little bit. Then I found this gem. You’ll also see my egg substitution. This is super handy! I used it for pancakes earlier in the week as well.

Preheat oven to 400°. Line a muffin tin with liners and lightly spray with oil.

Place oats in a food processor or chopper and pulse a few times. Soak oats in milk for about 30 minutes.
In a medium bowl combine brown sugar, honey, apple sauce, vanilla, egg whites (or flaxseed and water), oil and mix well.

In keeping with the theme of posting recipes that use ingredients out of my garden (the cilantro in that fruit salad was homegrown) I am making basil lemonade to help use up the large amount of basil that has sprung up. I love that you can use basil in both sweet and savory ways. I am also grilling some pizzas this afternoon that will have a handful of fresh basil on them. Yummy!

Place basil leaves, sugar and 1 cup water in a saucepan over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove basil leaves. In a pitcher combine simple syrup (the sugar water you just heated up), lemon juice, and 2 cups cold water. Serve over ice.

Enjoy! Preferably while sitting in your favorite lawn chair with a good book.

My youngest brother is leaving for Officer Candidate School (OCS) tomorrow. It’s hard to believe that he is old enough to become a Marine. I am extremely proud of him and I know he will do really well but of course it’s a little bittersweet. In honor of him shipping off to Virginia for 6 weeks we are going to have a little family gathering tonight. Nothing extravagant, just the parents and siblings. I decided to make a fruit salad…it’s yummy and very refreshing on a hot summer day. Like many we’ve had in the past couple weeks!

Until now I have been really hesitant to post pictures or even talk about my garden and let me tell you why. When I was little I asked my mom if I could have a little plot in our yard to plant some flowers. Once she said yes we went to the store and picked out some really nice plants for me to tend to. As soon as I planted them I promptly forgot all about them. I remember one day realizing I had never watered them and upon further investigation found a bunch of withered, sad-looking piles of flowers.

Fast forward fifteen or so years and I have a garden plot in my own yard. And guess what? Things are actually growing! And not only growing but producing! I thought I would be really stressed out about having a garden but I’ve actually found it to be incredibly enjoyable. Once I put Dieter down for the night I’ll go outside and tend to the veggies, weeding and watering them and sometimes simply looking for anything new that may have sprouted. With the warm weather we’ve been having the garden is flourishing and I’m already planning what to plant next year.

To keep it simple this is what I planted:
Tomatoes
Hot peppers
Sweet peppers
Beets
Carrots
Summer Squash
Peas
Beans
Basil
Cilantro
Chives (they came with the house)
Mesclun Mix (most of which I’ve pulled out already)
Spinach

I also have tried spearmint three times now but it will not grow for me which is funny because I had a ton of it last year.